Kicking Off is a low budget black comedy with a lot of kinetic energy and visual trickery that disguises the fact that the profanity filled muddled screenplay has ran out of steam.
Football fans Wiggsy (Warren Brown) and Cliff (Greg McHugh) are sick as a parrot when on the last day of the season, their football team is relegated. Their goal was disallowed and soon after the other side scored. The duo are gutted.
Wiggsy decides to kidnap the referee (Alastair Petrie) and get him to admit that he made a mistake in disallowing the goal. Cliff is perplexed and horrified that some pub banter has gone badly wrong.
The film is obviously inspired by The King of Comedy. Petrie who so often plays the snivelling villain gives a nicely understated performance as the god fearing ref who quickly figures that his kidnappers are barking mad as well as inept.
Wiggsy is the hothead whose actions signify that he is losing touch with reality, maybe due to the fact that his love life has gone awry.
The film is uneven in tone, too often switching from comedy to violence.
